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Sunday, 9 June 2019

I Work in the Environmental Movement - I Don’t Care if you Recycle

I’m at my
friend’s birthday dinner when an all-too-familiar conversation unfolds. I
introduce myself to the man to my left, tell him that I work in the
environmental field, and his face freezes in terror. Our handshake goes limp.

I knew what
was coming. He regaled me with a laundry list of environmental mistakes from
just that day: He’d ordered lunch and it came in plastic containers; he’d eaten
meat and he was about to order it again; he’d even taken a cab to this very
party.

I could hear
the shame in his voice. I assured him that I didn’t hate him, but that I hated
the industries that placed him — and all of us — in the same trick bag. Then
his shoulders lifted from their slump and his eyes met mine. “Yeah, ’cause
there’s really no point trying to save the planet anymore, right?”

My stomach
sank.

Sadly, I get
this reaction a lot. One word about my five years at the Natural Resources
Defense Council, or my work in the climate justice movement broadly, and I’m
bombarded with pious admissions of environmental transgressions or nihilistic
throwing up of hands. One extreme or the other.

And I
understand why. Scientists have been warning us for decades that humans are
causing severe and potentially irreversible changes to the climate, essentially
baking our planet and ourselves with carbon dioxide. A 2018 report from the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned that we had roughly 12 (now
11) years to make massive changes that could stop the worst impacts of climate
change.

Once upon a
time, perhaps, we needed a strong grasp of science to understand climate
change, but now all we have to do is look at the daily headlines — or out our
windows. From the Camp Fire, a devastating California wildfire that was
exacerbated by dry, hot weather, to Hurricane Michael, a storm that rapidly
intensified due to increased sea temperatures, climate change is here.

I don’t blame
anyone for wanting absolution. I can even understand abdication, which is its
own form of absolution. But underneath all that is a far more insidious force.
It’s the narrative that has both driven and obstructed the climate change
conversation for the past several decades. It tells us climate change could
have been fixed if we had all just ordered less takeout, used fewer plastic
bags, turned off some more lights, planted a few trees, or driven an electric
car. It says that if those adjustments can’t do the trick, what’s the point?

The belief
that this enormous, existential problem could have been fixed if all of us had just
tweaked our consumptive habits is not only preposterous; it’s dangerous. It
turns environmentalism into an individual choice defined as sin or virtue,
convicting those who don’t or can’t uphold these ethics. When you consider that
the same IPCC report outlined that the vast majority of global greenhouse gas
emissions come from just a handful of corporations — aided and abetted by the
world’s most powerful governments, including the US — it’s victim blaming,
plain and simple.

When people
come to me and confess their green sins, as if I were some sort of eco-nun, I
want to tell them they are carrying the guilt of the oil and gas industry’s
crimes. That the weight of our sickly planet is too much for any one person to
shoulder. And that that blame paves the road to apathy, which can really seal
our doom.

But that
doesn’t mean we do nothing. Climate change is a vast and complicated problem,
and that means the answer is complicated too. We need to let go of the idea
that it’s all of our individual faults, then take on the collective
responsibility of holding the true culprits accountable. In other words, we
need to become many Davids against one big, bad Goliath.

Greener than thou

When we think
about climate change, we’re almost never looking at the whole picture.
Generally, we talk about the impacts at a scale so macro, it’s almost
impossible to fathom: rising sea levels, melting ice caps, acidifying oceans.
In some perverse magic trick, it becomes both atmospheric and far, far away.
Everywhere and nowhere.

But when we
talk about the causes, the conversation suddenly narrows to our navels. In the
aftermath of the 2018 IPCC report, the internet was awash in story after story
after story about “what you can do about climate change.” Change your
lightbulbs. Bring reusable bags. Cut back on meat.

If the
answers are all in our hands, then the blame can’t be anywhere but at our feet.
And where does that all lead?

A population
beset with shame so heavy they can barely think about climate change — let
alone fight it.

This is where
the victim blaming takes hold. All too often, our culture broadly equates
“environmentalism” with personal consumerism. To be “good,” we must convert to
100 percent solar energy, ride an upcycled bike everywhere, stop flying, eat
vegan. We have to live a zero-waste lifestyle, never use Amazon Prime, etc.,
etc. I hear this message everywhere: the left- and right-wing media and within
the environmental movement. It’s even been used by the courts and the fossil
fuel industry itself as a defense against litigation. In fact, industries have
redirected the environmentalist narrative to blame consumers since the
ever-so-problematic “Crying Indian” ad campaign of the 1970s. I hear it from my
friends and family, strangers on the street, random people in yoga class.

And all this
raises the price of admission to the climate movement to an exorbitant level,
often pricing out people of color and other marginalized groups.

While we’re
busy testing each other’s purity, we let the government and industries — the
authors of said devastation — off the hook completely. This overemphasis on
individual action shames people for their everyday activities, things they can
barely avoid doing because of the fossil fuel-dependent system they were born
into. In fact, fossil fuels supply more than 75 percent of the US energy
system.

If we want to
function in society, we have no choice but to participate in that system. To
blame us for that is to shame us for our very existence.

Renowned
shame researcher Brené Brown describes shame as the “intensely painful feeling
or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love or
belonging.” This is not to be confused with guilt, which can actually be useful
because it holds our behavior against our values and forces us to feel
psychological discomfort. Shame, on the other hand, tells us that we are bad
people, that we are beyond redemption. It paralyzes us.

As Yessenia
Funes, a reporter at Earther, wrote, “I refuse to believe people should be
shamed for living in the world we’ve built.”

Consumer actions aren’t enough

So what can
we actually do about climate change? Well, to be crystal clear: I’m not advocating
for any throwing in of towels. The worst thing you can do about climate change
is nothing. Climate change is a huge problem, and to face it, we have to be
willing to make personal sacrifices we can feel. It’s our responsibility not
only to future generations but also to each other — right here, right now.

Furthermore,
given the United States’ outsize contribution to global warming, we have an
ethical obligation to shrink our carbon footprints. The United States is the
world’s second largest emitter, only recently having fallen from first place.
And our historical contribution is even more appalling. The United States is
responsible for more than a third of the carbon pollution that has warmed our
planet today — more than any other single nation.

Given our
enormous footprints, Americans’ personal consumption choices are some of the
most powerful in the world. So for us as Americans to say that our personal
actions are too frivolous to matter when people died in Cyclone Idai in
Mozambique, a country whose carbon footprint is barely visible next to ours, is
moral bankruptcy of the highest order.

At the same
time, though, the more we focus on individual action and neglect systemic
change, the more we’re just sweeping leaves on a windy day. So while personal
actions can be meaningful starting points, they can also be dangerous stopping
points.

We need to
broaden our definition of personal action beyond what we buy or use. Start by
changing your lightbulb, but don’t stop there. Taking part in a climate strike
or showing up to a rally is a personal action. Organizing neighbors to sue a
power plant that’s poisoning the community is a personal action.

Voting is a
personal action. When choosing your candidate, investigate their environmental
policies. If they aren’t strong enough, demand better. Once that person is in
office, hold them accountable. And if that doesn’t work, run for office
yourself — that’s another personal action.

Take your
personal action and magnify it into something bigger than what kind of bag
totes your groceries.

I don’t care

Here’s my
confession: I don’t care how green you are. I want you in the movement for
climate justice.

I don’t care
how long you’ve been engaged in the climate conversation, 10 years or 10
seconds. I don’t care how many statistics you can rattle off. I don’t need you
to be all-solar-everything to be an environmentalist. I don’t need you to be
vegan-er than thou, or me, for that matter. I don’t care if you are eating a
burger right this minute.

I don’t even
care if you work on an oil rig. In some parts of the country, those are the
only jobs that pay enough for you to feed your family. And I don’t blame workers
for that. I blame their employers. I blame the industry that is choking us all,
and the government that is letting them do it.

All I need
you to do is want a liveable future. This is your planet, and no one can
advocate for it like you can. No one can protect it like you can.

We have 11
years — not to start but to finish saving the planet.

I’m not here
to absolve you. And I’m not here to abdicate you. I am here to fight with you.

Mary Annaïse
Heglar is a climate justice essayist and the director of publications at the
Natural Resources Defense Council in New York. Find her onTwitterorMedium.